The violent, volcanic world of Hephastos is home to a colony of composers, painters, authors and poets, all striving to create the greatest works of art the universe has ever seen. But in pursuit of their goal, artistic collaboration has been taken a stage too far…
When the Doctor and Romana arrive, they discover the colonists have neglected their well-being and their once beautiful habitat, which has now succumbed to decay, and they are enslaved to the Babble network which occupies their every waking moment. Every thought, however trivial or insignificant , is shared with everyone else and privacy is now a crime.
The colonists are being killed and the Doctor and Romana begin to suspect that a malevolent intelligence is at work. With time running out, the two time travellers race to discover the truth before they too are absorbed into the endless trivia of the Babblesphere…
BABBLESPHERE
The fourth release in the anniversary “Destiny of the Doctor” series from Big Finish and AudioGO, Jonathan Morris’s “Babblesphere” is a straight homage to season 17 and the Graham Williams era. As such, it’s a largely successful mix of humor and ideas – and further defines the very traditional perspective this series has taken thus far.
A few recurring elements marked the Williams era: bold ideas, silly comedy, and criminally low production values. With the audio format stripping away the last of these, Morris was free to explore the first two, and he tackles both with enthusiasm. It’s a satire, first and foremost, and while it’s hard to pin down specifically, Morris is clearly going after social media: a means through which everyone knows everyone else’s thoughts, which started as a brilliant, useful tool but devolved into a mess that utterly consumed society. This could be the internet as a whole, it could be Twitter, or heck, it could be Doctor Who message boards – but Morris clearly views it with a cynic’s eye and a critic’s pen. And it wouldn’t be a season 17 story without a generous dose of Douglas Adams-inspired humor – Morris provides all that and more, recapturing the Doctor and Romana as the classic double-act so well known from television.
There is a complaint about the script, though, and it’s that nothing much actually happens. The Doctor and Romana arrive, get captured and recaptured, meet some rebels, and eventually journey into the Babblesphere where they talk the bad guy to death. Of course, the central conflict – everyone’s trapped inside a machine – doesn’t lend itself to a great deal of drama, so that’s understandable, but I’m not a huge fan of endings resolved exclusively through dialogue. Though in this case the dialogue is hilarious – I love the pointless lists of trivia – so it’s given a pass.
Lalla Ward offers the narration, and as expected she’s very good. It’s obviously difficult for her to capture Tom Baker’s voice, but she effortlessly nails his speech patterns and mannerisms. She also affects a noticeably different yet thoroughly recognizable tone for her lines as Romana, making it quite easy for the listener to picture the characters just as they were in 1979. There’s also the expected appearance by the eleventh Doctor, and Ward captures him almost as convincingly as the fourth. It’s a brief appearance, but even more obvious than the first three – he’s there in person, just long enough to sarcastically and playfully throw out his “Top Five Foes” – and Daleks are nowhere to be found!
It’s becoming clear as this anniversary series progresses that the aim is generally to capture the era in question as accurately as possible. The first story targeted the atmosphere of “An Unearthly Child,” the second went for base-under-siege, the third was alien-invasion, and now we have a note-perfect recreation of the Williams era. They’ve all been good stories to one extent or another, “Babblesphere” included, but there’s a certain air of predictability here along with the homage. It’ll be interesting to see how the series progresses, as the other eras aren’t so easily classified – though at the very least I expect the Colin Baker story to be violent!
John Ainsworth directs, just as he does for the rest of the series, and he’s done great work thus far with the narrators – “Babblesphere” is no different. Steve Foxon’s sound design seems deliberately evocative of Dudley Simpson and is quite effective as a result. As with “Vengeance of the Stones,” there isn’t a great deal to say about “Babblesphere,” but in the end it’s a fine, well-written anniversary tribute – and I expect we’ll be seeing more.
7/10